# Orbit Levels

Orbit levels are a practical tool for grouping community members according to
their level of involvement, i.e. their love. Orbit levels help us build
targeted community programs that meet members where they are, while creating
clear pathways for those who wish to move up and in.

The ratio of members between orbit levels is important to both growth and
gravity, because members at successively inner orbit levels are the ones
attracting and training members who are further out. If the ratio is
out of balance, e.g. there are too many new members for the experienced members
to handle, gravity will decrease and any growth is likely to retract.

A member's orbit level determines where they orbit inside of the community's
field of gravity. Newly exploring members sit up near the top and experienced
leaders revolve near the center.

![Field of gravity with orbit levels](../field-of-gravity.jpg)

Orbit levels are used to personalize member experiences, recognize &amp; reward
participation, and design focused community programs. They're useful as a shared
organizational vocabulary. When communicated to members and associated with
privileges and benefits, levels can be used to create powerful incentive
programs.

## About orbit levels

The Orbit Model offers 4 orbit levels as a standard configuration. Each orbit
level has a corresponding number, with 1 used for the most highly involved
members. This is done so that all Orbit Model users think of "Orbit 1" as their
inner circle even if their community has 4, 5, or 10 levels. Like with anything
in the model, feel free to customize levels to your needs, both in name and
number.

### Orbit 4 - Exploring

Orbit 4 contains newcomers and passive observers. These members may subscribe to
newsletters, read content, or join the forum just to observe. Whether you
consider them to be true "members" at this point or part of an audience is up to
the community.

### Orbit 3 - Participating

Orbit 3 contains members who have begun to attend, create, and interact—not only consume.
These members have navigated the community's onramp and started to recognize and
get to know other members.

### Orbit 2 - Contributing

Orbit 2 members have established a track record of active participation, and
also started attracting participants and explorers. They are putting time and
energy into the community, even if it's not for their own immediate benefit.

### Orbit 1 - Leading

Orbit 1 members are active contributors, organizers, and leaders. They play a
central role in attracting other members and directing the community toward
accomplishing its goals. Without these members, the community would struggle to
stay focused.

Here's a table to help you compare and remember the orbit levels:

| Orbit Level | Name          | Characterized by                   |
| ----------- | ------------- | ---------------------------------- |
| 4           | Exploring     | Newcomers and passive observers    |
| 3           | Participating | Casually involved regulars         |
| 2           | Contributing  | Active coordinators and volunteers |
| 1           | Leading       | Trusted leaders and advocates      |

<Callout>
  👉 The popular [Discourse](https://discourse.org/) forum software has a
  built-in concept called [Trust
  Levels](https://blog.discourse.org/2018/06/understanding-discourse-trust-levels/).
  The level names are *New*, *Basic*, *Member*, and *Leader*. The attainment is
  milestone-based: reaching the *Basic* level requires entering at least 5
  topics, reading at least 30 posts, and spending a total of 10 minutes reading
  posts. Privileges like moderation and administration are granted with higher
  levels.
</Callout>

## Steps

Four levels aren't very many when you consider how much involvement differs from
one member to the next. _Steps_ are sublevels within each level, designed to
sharpen the understanding of the members in that level. In the standard
configuration, each level has 3 steps inside of it.

| Step | Characterized by                           |
| ---- | ------------------------------------------ |
| III  | Members new to the level                   |
| II   | Members comfortable at the level           |
| I    | Members setting the standard for the level |

A member's step can be a function of their duration at the level, or dependent
on reaching new milestones within the level.

## Determining orbit levels

To use orbit levels, we need a system to decide how to place members in each
level. There are two primary signals that we can use to place members:

- the commitment level of their activities
- the frequency of their participation

These are the two components of love: commitment and presence.

Sometimes only one of these signals is needed. For example, in a community where
the progression of activities is explicit, a presence signal is not needed. If a
member hits a milestone by doing a particular activity, say hosting an event,
they are placed into the corresponding orbit level.

In practice, most communities don't have an exact hierarchy of activity types.
For example, a chat community where all activities are chat messages. In these
situations, presence is needed to decide the orbit level. Most modern communities
that have a variety of chat and non-chat activities are able to benefit from both
signals in determining levels.

### Table of activity weights and milestones

The [activities](../activities) page describes the concept of activity weights.
The weight of the activity indicates the commitment level. If a community is
using the standard 4 orbit levels and 3 steps, that makes it convenient to have
a 1-12 scale for weights. The higher the weight, the stronger the pull toward the
center of the community and the inner orbit levels.

Here's how to read this table. A member is placed into an orbit level IF they
have done an activity of the associated weight OR reached the associated
presence milestone.

| Orbit Level       | Activity Weight | Presence Milestone             |
| ----------------- | --------------- | ------------------------------ |
| Exploring III     | 1               | ...                            |
| Exploring II      | 2               | ...                            |
| Exploring I       | 3               | ...                            |
| Participating III | 4               | 2 days in a week               |
| Participating II  | 5               | &nbsp;&nbsp; ...for 2 weeks    |
| Participating I   | 6               | &nbsp;&nbsp; ...for 3 weeks    |
| Contributing III  | 7               | 7 days in a month              |
| Contributing II   | 8               | &nbsp;&nbsp; ...for 2 months   |
| Contributing I    | 9               | &nbsp;&nbsp; ...for 3 months   |
| Leading III       | 10              | 30 days in a quarter           |
| Leading II        | 11              | &nbsp;&nbsp; ...for 2 quarters |
| Leading I         | 12              | &nbsp;&nbsp; ...for 3 quarters |

The presence milestones in the table are structured so that gaining entry into
the orbit level is done by reaching the milestone once, and progressing up the
ladder of steps is done by repeating the milestone again.

Both activity weights and presence milestones provide important ways to
customize the model. In some communities, being present multiple times a week
represents leadership. In other communities, it might not be much of a signal at
all, and only place a member into the Participating orbit level. We recommend
that community leaders sit down and think about what activities, weights, and
presence milestones make the most sense for their community, and then start
using and tweaking their orbit model configuration.

For online and hybrid communities, we find that 1 year is a reasonable standard
for how far back to consider a member's activity for the purposes of determining
their orbit level. If the community runs on slower cycles, 5 or 10 years may be
appropriate.

## Holding orbit levels

Once a member is in an orbit level, how do we know when they should fall back down?
Knowing when they should go up is easy - we only need to know if they reach the next
step or level's milestone.

Deciding when levels should go down is trickier, as some members will ultimately
not continue to meet the milestones of their current level. Especially if orbit
levels are public, the experience of awarding an orbit level only to have it
changed a week later isn't great.

A simple way to deal with this is to award higher orbit levels immediately, but
only consider orbit level downgrades every 1 month, 3 months, or year depending
on what's right for your community. This ensures that orbit levels change in a
predictable way when going down, and avoids situations where an orbit level goes
up and down rapidly due to the member being right on an edge.

## Teammates

In product communities, there are usually community builders who work for the
company behind the product. It's their job to work full time on the community.
There may be others at the company who casually participate. A common question
for orbit model users is: "should teammates have orbit levels"?

Our answer is yes, with a caveat. Putting teammates in orbit levels is helpful
to seeing how much company engagement there is in the community, and by whom.
Strong participation by company employees in a product community is a must-have
for gravity and growth. The community want to know the company cares about them,
and it's not just one or two of the same faces.

The caveat is that teammates should be removed from the gravity calculation and
other types of community reports. Teammates are hired to work in the community,
their often heavy amount of participation can skew the numbers, making it look
like there's more member engagement than there actually is.
